SEO Tactics To Forget in 2018

SEO Tactics To Forget in 2018

In today’s demanding market of digitalisation and globalisation, it’s vital for firms to utilise online strategies and techniques that enhance their visibility to customers that are proactively browsing for their products or services. Search Engines are without a doubt the most influential programs that will have a bearing on your online exposure, and hence your website traffic, conversion rates, and ultimately success. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), therefore, is used frequently by most websites to enhance their Search Engine rankings, otherwise known as ‘Search Engine Results Pages’ (SERPs).

SEO can be a reliable investment that will raise your exposure and conversion rates, or if used improperly, can injure your rankings and visibility, thus having the opposite effect. The issue with SEO is that its algorithm is frequently changing, and most website owners don’t keep up to date with the current SEO trends. SEO techniques that worked last year may not necessarily be successful this year, and well-known SEO tactics from five years ago may result in your website being penalised today.

Instead of discussing the top SEO techniques that website owners should be committing to, we’re instead going to delve into the top SEO tactics that will actually penalise your website and therefore should be completely forgotten in 2018.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is a regular mistake that many website owners make in an attempt to raise their SERP results. Keyword stuffing is fundamentally the same as it sounds – adding as many keywords/phrases to a websites content or meta tags in any way possible. Search Engine spiders or crawlers can instantly determine how many times a keyword has been used and will penalise websites for unnecessary keyword stuffing. Rather than keyword stuffing, website owners should fixate their efforts on the sub-topics and related information behind the keywords/phrases themselves.

Aggressive Link Building

Link building has been a common SEO technique since the onset of SEO, and its value as an SEO tactic has developed dramatically ever since. Although link building is still one of the leading 3 SEO tactics in 2018, aggressive link building will unquestionably result in your website being penalised. Google weighs links strongly as a ranking signal simply because links are a public promotion which corresponds with valued information on a website.

Aggressive link building transpires where links are garnered in a synthetic way. Examples of this is where links are inserted in poor link directories, purchasing links, link schemes, and other spammy tactics. This SEO tactic will lead to penalties for a website and should be discontinued, instead being substituted with a link building strategy that is more user-focused and marketing based.

Excessive Internal Links

One obsolete SEO technique that lots of people still perceive to be effective is excessive internal links. There is a general misconception where websites that contain a large amount of links to other pages within the website will assist their SERP results. The intention in doing this is to increase a website’s backlink profile. This is definitely not accurate, as excessive internal links within your website will do more harm than good.

Not Identifying Technical Issues

The backend of a website plays a substantial role in SEO, so it’s important not only to identify any technical issues that may damage your SERP rankings, but also keep up to date with the latest best practices. For example, Google has just released an update regarding SSL encryption, so if a website doesn’t obey this update now, it will be penalised. The most typical technical problems that impact most websites today are:

Slow loading page times

Mobile errors

Duplicate content

Improper redirects

Unintentional blocked pages

Not Optimising Images

One of the most ignored SEO tactic that will enhance your SERP rankings are related to the images within a website. Optimising your website for image search is a superb way to strengthen your SEO, and this can be done mainly with the image filename and alt attribute. As an example, rather than supplying an image with a filename of home1.jpg, website owners should instead try to use a keyword that describes the image. Additionally, a common mistake with images is keyword stuffing the alt attribute.

There’s no question that a competent SEO strategy will strengthen a website’s SERP rankings and exposure, however due to many websites abusing SEO tactics in the past, Search Engine’s SEO algorithms are regularly changing and it’s pivotal to keep up with these changes to thrive in today’s online marketplace. If you need any support with your SEO strategy, or simply haven’t updated your strategy in the last few years, talk to Internet Marketing Experts Shepparton on 1300 595 013, or visit our website for additional information: http://www.internetmarketingexpertsshepparton.com.au